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Topic: No Knead Dough (Read 34230 times)

I know that Sullivan Street makes a potato pizza with dough that's nearlly 100% hydrated. My poolish is 100% hydrated and I've noticed that when pouring it out of its container, the gluten is very well developed. I guess I will give this a try as well!

I would like to put just some caution around this just because this thread sits in the Neapolitan section (Steve-Peter should it sit here in the first place?)

A high hydration Neapolitan dough would probably be sitting at around 37% in the same parameters. Taking into account the mobility of the gluten forming proteins in high hydration dough, this shouldn't happen as easily as with 5 point more hydration and however it is very limited. Also the quantity and quality of the gluten are a factors and what McGee states would not give the same results with all quality of flours. Also McGee's answer may be taken out of context without exploring other factors, such as while the long time give the chance to the Gluten forming protein to move and interact , at the same time enzymes will be working on the gluten already formed, therefore some will be forming and some other will be breaking..... It is very important to point out that two flours at 12% proteins may have different quantities of gluten in it (not all the proteins in the flour are gluten forming).

To summaries this is a typical example whereby what works in Breadmaking will not work in Pizzamaking...

I wonder if this bread could be parbaked and frozen? Maybe removing the loaves from the oven after the initial 20 minute covered bake, then cooling, then freezing. I love the bread, I just don't like that you have to plan on making it so far in advance. I'd like to maybe parbake 4 or 5 of them and then thaw them on the days that I feel like serving them with dinner. Is there any way it could possibly still be crispy after thawing and cooking for another 30 minutes uncovered?

LAST month I wrote about Jim Lahey, the owner of Sullivan Street Bakery on West 47th Street in Manhattan, and his clever way to produce a European-style boule at home. Mr. Lahey’s recipe calls for very little yeast, a wet dough, long rising times and baking in a closed, preheated pot. My results with Mr. Lahey’s method have been beyond satisfying.

Happily, so have those of most readers. In the last few weeks Jim Lahey’s recipe has been translated into German, baked in Togo, discussed on more than 200 blogs and written about in other newspapers. It has changed the lives (their words, not mine) of veteran and novice bakers. It has also generated enough questions to warrant further discussion here. The topics are more or less in the order of the quantity of inquiries.

WEIGHT VS. VOLUME The original recipe contained volume measures, but for those who prefer to use weight, here are the measurements: 430 grams of flour, 345 grams of water, 1 gram of yeast and 8 grams of salt. With experience, many people will stop measuring altogether and add just enough water to make the dough almost too wet to handle.

SALT Many people, me included, felt Mr. Lahey’s bread was not salty enough. Yes, you can use more salt and it won’t significantly affect the rising time. I’ve settled at just under a tablespoon.

YEAST Instant yeast, called for in the recipe, is also called rapid-rise yeast. But you can use whatever yeast you like. Active dry yeast can be used without proofing (soaking it to make sure it’s active).TIMING About 18 hours is the preferred initial rising time. Some readers have cut this to as little as eight hours and reported little difference. I have not had much luck with shorter times, but I have gone nearly 24 hours without a problem. Room temperature will affect the rising time, and so will the temperature of the water you add (I start with tepid). Like many other people, I’m eager to see what effect warmer weather will have. But to those who have moved the rising dough around the room trying to find the 70-degree sweet spot: please stop. Any normal room temperature is fine. Just wait until you see bubbles and well-developed gluten — the long strands that cling to the sides of the bowl when you tilt it — before proceeding.

THE SECOND RISE Mr. Lahey originally suggested one to two hours, but two to three is more like it, in my experience. (Ambient temperatures in the summer will probably knock this time down some.) Some readers almost entirely skipped this rise, shaping the dough after the first rise and letting it rest while the pot and oven preheat; this is worth trying, of course.

OTHER FLOURS Up to 30 percent whole-grain flour works consistently and well, and 50 percent whole-wheat is also excellent. At least one reader used 100 percent whole-wheat and reported “great crust but somewhat inferior crumb,” which sounds promising. I’ve kept rye, which is delicious but notoriously impossible to get to rise, to about 20 percent. There is room to experiment.

FLAVORINGS The best time to add caraway seeds, chopped olives, onions, cheese, walnuts, raisins or whatever other traditional bread flavorings you like is after you’ve mixed the dough. But it’s not the only time; you can fold in ingredients before the second rising.

OTHER SHAPES Baguettes in fish steamers, rolls in muffin tins or classic loaves in loaf pans: if you can imagine it, and stay roughly within the pattern, it will work.

COVERING BETWEEN RISES A Silpat mat under the dough is a clever idea (not mine). Plastic wrap can be used as a top layer in place of a second towel.

THE POT The size matters, but not much. I have settled on a smaller pot than Mr. Lahey has, about three or four quarts. This produces a higher loaf, which many people prefer — again, me included. I’m using cast iron. Readers have reported success with just about every available material. Note that the lid handles on Le Creuset pots can only withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees. So avoid using them, or remove the handle first.

BAKING You can increase the initial temperature to 500 degrees for more rapid browning, but be careful; I scorched a loaf containing whole-wheat flour by doing this. Yes, you can reduce the length of time the pot is covered to 20 minutes from 30, and then increase the time the loaf bakes uncovered. Most people have had a good experience baking for an additional 30 minutes once the pot is uncovered.As these answers demonstrate, almost everything about Mr. Lahey’s bread is flexible, within limits. As we experiment, we will have failures. (Like the time I stopped adding flour because the phone rang, and didn’t realize it until 18 hours later. Even this, however, was reparable). This method is going to have people experimenting, and largely succeeding, until something better comes along. It may be quite a while.

« Last Edit: December 06, 2006, 09:36:09 AM by mmarston »

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Mixed the dry ingredients in the KA with dough hook at lowest setting, then slowly added water, and let mix for a few minutes at lowest mixer speed setting. Removed dough hook, covered bowl with stretch wrap.

Was covered at 8:30 p.m., so should be ready for final forming and rise around 3:00 p,m,.

Just for fun, I decided to bake one of my larger dough balls in the same cooking style as this just to test if the results would come out similar. It's a 63% hydration dough, with a little bit of wheat flour as well as some honey & olive oil. My reason for trying this is that I think one of the main reasons the "no knead" bread turns out so good is because of the steam from the enclosed cooking area. I haven't tasted the results yet, but the exterior feels every bit as crispy as the "no knead" recipe. And because of the wheat and honey, my bread has a nicer color. I cooked it the same (30 minutes covered, 20 uncovered). But I lowered the temp to 400° for the last 20 minutes because I thought the honey might make it brown too much. It's my best looking bread so far.

Steve, are you saying that you used a pizza recipe dough and added the honey and oil, but this dough WAS kneaded. Then baked in a closed pot to get these results.... great looking bread!! PLease explain..thanks..

Exactly. I didn't follow the no-knead recipe at all with this bread. It's my regular pizza dough recipe. I did about a 4 minute mix, a 15 minute rest, and then another 4 or 5 minutes of kneading. This dough ball sat in the fridge for 3 days before I decided to make bread with it. I've baked bread with pizza dough before and I've gotten decent results. I usually slash a crosshatch on the top of the dough and just slide it onto a pizza stone for about 45 minutes, placing a pan of water under the stone for some steam. The crust would be a little bit crispy, but not as good as in the no knead recipe.

I figured the crusty exterior of the no knead bread came from the trapped steam in the enclosed cooking device. So I just decided to cook my regular old pizza dough the same way and I wound up getting the same crusty exterior. Plus it was a lot easier to manage the dough this way. I did let it rise on a covered cotton cloth for a few hours after I took it out of the fridge. I slashed the surface of the dough with a razor right after I opened up the zip lock container it was in. Then I dumped it on a floured cloth, sprinkled some more flour on top of it, and covered it with another cloth.

Honestly, pizza dough is rather versatile. I've made great breadsticks with it. I know you can make pretzels with it. Great pizza, of course. I've even made little rings and dropped them in the deep fryer to make pretty good zeppole doughnuts. I had made really good bread with it in the past, and now I've made great bread. :-)

Thanks for the explanation, I was wondering myself why not pizza dough using this technique. It looks like your cooking vessel was some sort of ceramic pot..maybe from a crockpot. I'm going to experiment using two glass pyrex containers one is a lid but they are'nt as deep as a pot. So when I heat them up and drop the dough in it won't be as high a drop so the dough shouldn't deflate as much.I feel this is the only draw back with the no knead technique was after letting your dough rise to turn it over and plop it down into the pot which deflates the great rise you are trying to attain. Also was thinking about just putting the dough into a cool pot and place it in the oven, perhaps the slow gradual heating of the pot would produce a higher lighter rise..we shall see...

Has anyone tried letting the second rise happen in the pot and then putting it in the oven cold?Getting this wet sticky dough into the hot pot is always exciting to say the least. I bought a silicone mat expecting the dough to fall right off but itthe stuff sticks to that as well. Anyone have tips for getting the dough into the pot?

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Has anyone tried letting the second rise happen in the pot and then putting it in the oven cold?Getting this wet sticky dough into the hot pot is always exciting to say the least. I bought a silicone mat expecting the dough to fall right off but itthe stuff sticks to that as well. Anyone have tips for getting the dough into the pot?

You can try this trick... if you think your dough is sticking get a piece of dental floss and run the floss between the dough and the silpat...it will cut/release the dough with enough time to flip/remove the dough with confidence.. Or as suggested just put a thick layer of dried flour/bran...etc.. down first

Has anyone tried letting the second rise happen in the pot and then putting it in the oven cold?

I tried this and the bread stuck worse than anything I've ever experienced before. This was in a virtually stick-proof antique enameled dutch oven. I had to cut the top part of the bread from the stuck bottom crust and soak the pot overnight.

I have made several loaves with great success, but my last was a disaster. I used cornmeal in the bottom of my LC Dutch Oven, but the bread stuck. I had to really work to get it out and I messed up the appearance.

One of my favorite breads that I purchase from Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery to bring back to Texas with me whenever I visit New York City is their walnut-raisin loaf. It is a round, dark, fairly flat loaf with a good amount of chopped walnuts and raisins and what appears to be a faint taste of cinnamon. Like the bakery’s other breads, it is based on using organic flour, water, a natural starter, salt and yeast (commercial). Although I had not tried the No Knead dough method before, I decide to try to replicate the walnut-raisin-cinnamon loaf using a modified form of that method. I also decided that I would use only a natural starter for leavening purposes and, for this purpose, I resurrected my Camaldoli starter that had lain dormant in my refrigerator for several months.

In the course of preparing the dough, I made several changes to the basic No Knead method. First, I used organic all-purpose flour. In my case it was the King Arthur "Artisan" organic all-purpose flour, and it was sifted before using. Second, I replaced part of the formula flour with vital wheat gluten (Hodgson Mills brand) in order to increase the protein content of the all-purpose flour to a bread flour level (12.7%) and to hopefully increase the volume rise of the dough to compensate for the leadening effects of the addition of a fair amount of chopped walnuts and raisins to the dough. I used November’s Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator at http://foodsim.unclesalmon.com/ to apportion the total flour between the KA organic flour and the vital wheat gluten. The amount of VWG was about 8 grams, or approximately 3 teaspoons.

Third, I used a more or less classic autolyse, with a rest period of about 20 minutes after the VWG was whisked into the water in a large bowl and the bulk of the flour had been mixed together in the bowl, using a sturdy wooden spoon. I followed these steps with the addition of the starter (about 5 T. and 1 t.), a tablespoon of nondiastatic barley malt syrup (Eden brand), the remaining flour, and the salt. The barley malt syrup was used to provide a bit of sweetness to the finished loaf and to help increase the browning of the crust to achieve the characteristic dark brown color of the Sullivan Street Bakery walnut-raisin loaf. The syrup would also produce a darker colored crumb as is also characteristic of the Sullivan Street Bakery walnut-raisin loaf.

Once the dough was complete, I put it into a lightly covered container and then into my ThermoKool MR-138 unit, set at 75° F (for a typical photo of the unit, see http://www.focususa.com/showpage.asp?categoryid=14&category=personalcare&subcategoryid=275&subcategory=travel&itemid=2953&template=product_info.htm). Since my Camaldoli starter was still a bit on the weak side after several months in the refrigerator, I did not know how long it would take for the dough to rise and develop bubbling at the upper surface of the dough to tell me to proceed to the next step. In my case, it took about 28 hours, with the bulk of the activity taking place in the final few hours. I would estimate that the dough increased by about 50-60%. The dough was then brought to my work area and I kneaded about one teaspoon of ground cinnamon into the dough, which was very soft and wet at this stage, along with about 3 ounces of chopped walnuts and 7 ounces of raisins. The cinnamon was added at this stage rather than earlier because I had read that there is a component of cinnamon, cynnamic aldehyde, that can adversely affect yeast performance. The chopped walnuts and raisins were worked into the dough using a pair of bench knives (a.k.a. bench scrapers) only. Because the dough was very wet, especially before I added the walnuts and raisins, whenever I felt I had to touch the dough to shape it a bit, I used wet hands so that the dough wouldn't stick to my fingers.

To bake the loaf, I decided not to use the method used most commonly with the No Knead dough but rather to use my baking stone, and to bake the loaf on parchment paper. This is a method that I believe Rose Levy Berenbaum mentioned in her blog on the No Knead topic, and to me seems to be a more sure way of handling and baking the dough than using the types of baking utensils and associated dough handling methods discussed by those who have experimented with the No Knead method. In lieu of the bran flakes that Sullivan Street Bakery appears to use on the bottom of their walnut-raisin dough before baking, I used a seven-grain mix that was the closest I had to the bran flakes, but which appears to include bran flakes as part of the mix. I scattered some of the grain mix on a piece of parchment paper, which had been put on my peel, and deposited the wet dough mass on the parchment paper for the final 3-hour rise period.

About an hour before the conclusion of that period, I preheated my baking stone on the middle oven rack position for about an hour at 500° F. At the same time, I placed a pie tin filled with stones on the lowest oven rack position so that they would also heat up along with the stone. Just prior to loading the dough into the oven, I poured water into the tin with the stones to create a moist oven environment for the dough. After loading the dough into the oven, I lowered the oven temperature to 450° F, and for a couple of times thereafter within the next five minutes, I spritzed the sides of the oven with a spray water bottle. The bread was baked for about 35-40 minutes, or until the center was at a temperature of around 206° F.

The photos below show the finished loaf--top, bottom, and cross-sectional views. It had very nice color and was very tasty with well balanced flavors. The baked loaf weighed about 2 pounds 4 ounces and very much resembled the Sullivan Street Bakery loaf in just about all respects, except that it was quite a bit larger. I will most likely tinker with the formulation in future efforts in search for improvement. For example, I might use more cinnamon, barley malt syrup, and nuts and raisins, and possibly try out dried cranberries or cherries. And I may play around with the amount and type of starter used and fermentation temperatures. If I can find a relatively easy and convenient way to use my large oval Creuset pot, I may try that also.

As I reported on another thread some time ago, Sullivan Street Bakery uses a bit of IDY in their doughs in addition to their natural starter. I thought of doing the same but when I have done that in the past, I lose too much (in some cases, all) of the sourdough flavor. There must be commercial reasons why Sullivan Street Bakery uses both forms of yeast, like shortening the fermentation period or as an insurance policy in case the starter doesn't behave as desired.